How to Play
The object of Spades is to be the first team to reach the stated point goal.

At the start of the round, each player is dealt 13 cards. Select the number of tricks you believe you can win during this round. Your bid and your partner's bid are added together, and this is the number of tricks that your team must take to win the round.

When it's your turn to play a card, the yellow "PLAY CARD" prompt will appear above your cards. Click an available card to play it. If you don't have any cards in the suit that was led, you can play any card.

Spades are always trump--that is, they outrank all other suits. When each player has played a card, the person who played the highest Spade wins these cards for his or her team, thus winning the trick. If no trump was played, the person who played the highest card in the suit that was led wins the trick. (Aces are the highest card.)

The player who won the trick now leads a card. Play continues in this fashion until all four players have played all their cards.

Only the host of a table can instigate a vote to boot a player. By clicking on the "Boot" button, the host will see a pop up listing the other three players at the table. He must click on the player he wants booted.

The other two players are then given the chance to vote if the selected player should be booted. It takes at least two of the three votes for a player to be booted out of a game.

If a player is successfully booted and the game is rated, then the remaining three players must wait for a new fourth to join the game before play can continue. If the game was unrated, a robot player will fill in for the booted player.

If a player leaves during a game, the host will be offered four choices: Wait, play robot, find a new table or play a different game. If the game is rated and the host chooses to allow a robot player to fill in, the robot will assume the rating of the player that left.

Any player who leaves a rated game before it is complete will have their rating change as if they had lost the game.

In the event that you lose your Internet connection during a game, log back on and try to rejoin your game. The host may have chosen to wait for you to return, and if so you have a 10 minute grace period before you have a Quit (loss) recorded for you.

When a host is setting up a spades table, there are several options he can select that affect the game play. The default options - and their alternatives - for all tables are as follows:

The score to end the game is 500 points. Other choices include 250 and 750 points.

The team must make a minimum bid of 4. This figure can be changed to 0, 1, 2, 3 or 5.

If a player bids Blind Nil, she can exchange two cards with her partner. If this option is unchecked then a bid of Blind Nil will not be able to exchange any cards.

Players must wait until spades are broken before leading with spades. If this option is unchecked then players can lead with spades at any time without restrictions.

Bids allowed are Nil, Blind bids, and Blind Nil. If any of these are unchecked they will no longer be allowed. Other choices include Zero, Moon and Blind Moon; these must be checked off to be allowed during the game.

In addition to the default settings above, there are two further choices a host can select for his table.

Pass one card to partner before bidding. If this is checked off then each partner must swap one card before they bid.

Twos of any suit count as the highest spade. If this option is checked off then the twos are treated as the highest spades. The order of spades, from highest to lowest is two of hearts, two of clubs, two of diamonds, two of spades, ace of spades, king of spaces, queen of spades and so on down to the lowest card, three of spades.

You can always view the options selected for the table by clicking the "Options" button on the lower right side of the screen.

Once a game has started, the options selected cannot be changed until the game is over. Only the host can change the options settings between games.